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Amid all the historical hoopla last week concerning the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, our Nowhere Zone got left out.
Though mainstream America can't find the Nowhere Zone,
we know where it is -- we live in it. It's the America
that's not in 10 Eastern, 9 Central, 7 Pacific.
It
is where women gained the vote years before the 19th
amendment took effect on Aug. 26, 1920.
Thus I have been able to read and hear about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Harry Burn, the young Tennessee legislator who voted for ratification.
From this, you get the idea that women never voted in
this country before 1920. The original U.S. Constitution
essentially left voter qualifications up to the states. The
15th Amendment, adopted in the wake of the Civil War, held
that The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied ... on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude.
So any state was free to allow women to vote; the
federal constitution didn't care, one way or another, about
female suffrage. (The word has no connection to
suffer.
It comes from suffragari,
Latin for
to vote.
)
In 1869, Wyoming Territory became the first political
jurisdiction in the world where women could vote on the
same terms as men. After Wyoming became the equality
state
in 1890, Wyoming women (and men) could vote in
congressional and presidential elections.
Colorado could have been the first state, as opposed to territory, with women voters. When our state constitution was adopted in 1876, women were granted the vote in school-board elections, and the statehood act provided for a referendum. Suffrage was defeated in 1877, but in 1893, it passed in a referendum -- Colorado was the first state to grant suffrage by popular vote.
One result was that, a century ago, Denver was the
largest city in the world in which women could vote.
Another result was that the Populist governor who had
campaigned tirelessly for female suffrage -- Davis H.
Bloody Bridles
Waite -- got voted out of office by
the very women he had worked so hard to enfranchise.
Utah Territory granted women the franchise in 1870. The U.S. Congress, fearing the influence of polygamy, took away their vote in 1887, but it was restored with statehood in 1896.
When most women in the United States could not vote at all, Montana sent Jeannette Rankin to Congress in 1916. But she gets left out of the mainstream historical extravaganza, as do other crusaders like William H. Bright in Wyoming, Abigail Scott Duniway in Oregon and Caroline Nichols Churchill in Colorado. Before the amendment in 1920, women could vote in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, California, Arizona, Kansas, Oregon, Nevada and Montana.
In general, the political history of the West is rather sordid -- corporate corruption, mostly, with a dose of Klan activity. But we do have that bright spot. And it gets left out of the wire service and network accounts.
Why? I'll guess at a few reasons.
1) The national media really are dominated by people who think all wisdom emanates from Washington. In their view, state governments are reactionary, while the federal government is progressive. They simply can't believe that a state might be more enlightened than the federal government, and so they ignore any evidence to the contrary.
2) America likes losers. We should. We're a democracy, and the majority of us are losers -- if 32 people enter a race, 31 will be losers. The tale of Susan B. Anthony dying in 1906 before she could vote is poignant. That Abigail Scott Duniway finally got to cast her ballot in Oregon makes her triumphant, rather than a victim, and it's the victims who are fashionable these days.
3) Any honest history of the suffrage movement would
have to note that it was intimately linked to the crusade
for temperance
-- that is, prohibition.
Many suffragettes also pushed to close the saloons.
Their propaganda often showed a woman warrior slaying the
Demon Rum with a sword of feminine virtue. As historian
Richard Write notes, Suffrage efforts often collapsed
when immigrant Democratic voters feared that women's
suffrage would lead to prohibition.
Both the 18th and 19th amendments -- prohibition and suffrage -- were adopted at about the same time, and as a result of the same energies. Susan B. Anthony began her public career as a temperance lecturer, and the Wyoming legislature came within one vote of repealing suffrage in 1871 because women were trying to close the saloons.
But prohibition was a failure. Its mere mention in connection with suffrage might tarnish the latter, and so popular history gets rewritten. Honest history would also bring up some nasty questions of class warfare and anti-immigrant bias; voting women were generally middle- and upper-class, and their political support would help suppress the immigrant rabble who patronized saloons and organized unions.
All of this is vastly more interesting than Harry Burn and his note from his mother, but it happened in the Nowhere Zone, and so nobody that matters takes any note of it.
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